Global Gaze - Global Gays

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GLOBAL GAZE/GLOBAL GAYS
Dennis Altman
“What was fundamentally invisible is

suddenly offered to the brightness of the
gaze, in a movement of appearance so
simple, so immediate that it seems to be
the natural consequence of a more highly
developed experience .”
Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic
O v e r the past few years I have been involved in several debates about how
best to understand the emergence of a western-style politicized homosexuali-
ty in Asia, and about the usefulness of the concepts of “gay” and “Asia” in
these debates. At the 1992 Asia/Pacific AIDS Conference in Delhi there were
real tensions within the gay caucus-which met, symbolically enough, in a
park opposite the conference hotel once organizers claimed no meeting rooms
were available-between those who defined the region geographically and
those who defined it in terms of ethnicity. In the end it was an ethnic Indian
from New Zealand who insisted that the white gay men from Australasia
should be regarded as legitimate members of the region.
It is easy to point to the artifice of “Asia,” to say that any concept that
includes Uzbekis and Koreans and Bangladeshis might as well find room for
Australians. But this argument ignores the historical and racial ties of settler
Australia to the western world, ties which make our claim for inclusion in
“Asia” sound ignorant of history and look like a new form of colonialism. My
own involvement in these debates has been part of an evolving research
interest in the growth of self-conscious “gay” communities and identities in
GLQ, Vol. 3, pp. 417-436 6 1997 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association)

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418 6LQ: A JOURNAL OF LESBIAN b6AY STUDIES
Asia, and the problems of such terms are reflected in much of my research.
Some readers of the first draft of this paper complained that the term “Asian”
was too broad to be of value, yet it is frequently invoked by the groups
themselves to stress certain commonalities in their histories and experiences.
I come to this research as a privileged, white, Australian gay intellectual,
with access to considerable resources (intellectual, economic, political). But I
am also very dependent on those people I am researching, who have f a r
greater cultural and linguistic knowledge than I possess, and whose explana-
tions of phenomena reflect as much as mine a particular set of emotional and
intellectual positions. In this situation I see myself as coresearcher, ultimately
dependent on both the goodwill and self-interest of my informants.
The anthropologist can usually assume her “otherness” from the subject of
his study. In my interactions with Asian gay men this assumption fails to hold
up. My research builds on social interactions with people in a variety of
settings ranging from sitting on the beach in Bali to meetings in air-
conditioned halls at AIDS conferences in Berlin and Yokohama, and is pred-
icated on my sharing a certain common ground-sexual, social, political-
with those of whom I speak. I would argue that the best understandings of the
gay worlds have come out of this way of working-see, for example, Edmund
White’s account of pre-AIDS gay America, States of Desire-but both
academically and ethically this sort of “participant observation” poses
dilemmas.
In researching the development of “Asian” (specifically archipelagic south-
east Asian) gay worlds I am both outsider and insider: indeed, I have had the
experience of meeting Asian men, engaged in gay political work, who have
been influenced by my own writings. Thus I am engaging with men where
there is a complex power dynamic at work: I represent the power, prestige,
and wealth of the west, but because we are meeting on a terrain of shared
sexuality where mutual desire is an acknowledged possibility, and where I
depend on their goodwill, the power dynamics a r e not simply unidimensional.
My relations with Asian lesbians reflects a greater distance, and so far I have
not been able to make more than very superficial contacts (not least because
of the ways in which international AIDS politics have opened up space for
homosexual men but not women). I constantly have to balance what I seem to
be seeing against an awareness that my “informants” are telling stories for
which I am the intended audience and which often fit their desires to see
themselves as part of a “modern” gay world.
These relationships are further complicated by two contradictory trends.
On the one hand, Asian gay men, by stressing a universal gay identity, under-
line a similarity with Westerners. Against this, on the other hand, the desire
to assert an “Asian” identity, not unlike the rhetoric of the “Asian way”
adopted by authoritarian regimes such as those of China, Indonesia, and
GLOBAL GIUVGLOBAL 6AY8 41I
Malaysia, may undermine this assumed,solidarity. Moreover, the ubiquity of

western rhetoric means that many of the informants use the language of the
west to describe a rather different reality. For example, the Gay Men5
Exchange, a four-page photocopied “zine” produced in Manila, includes a
two-page “Gay Man’s Guide to Coming Out,” reproduced from a popular
American publication (Muchmore and Hanson). The language of this and
other western publications helps determine not only the language used in
groups but also who might feel comfortable in discussions and how they may
explain their own feelings to themselves. Last year in Manila I watched the
film VictorlVictoriu on local television. Although it is ostensibly set in Paris in
the 1930s its characters speak of “coming out” as “gay.” Such “politically
correct” historical anachronisms presumably send messages to the larger
audience who may have seen the film on prime time television.
Gradually, western lesbiadgay theorists and activists are beginning to
perceive the problems of claiming a universality for an identity which devel-
oped out of certain historical specificities. In his introduction to a recent
book of “queer theory,” Michael Warner writes:
In the middle ground between the localism of “discourse” and the gener-
ality of the subject is the problem of international-or otherwise trans-
local-sexual politics. As gay activists from non-Western contexts
become more and more involved in setting agendas, and as the rights
discourse of internationalism is extended to more and more cultural
contexts, Anglo-American queer theorists will have to be more alert
to the globalizing-and localizing-tendencies of our theoretical
languages .” (xii)
None of the contributors to this particular book take up this challenge-

despite its title, Fear o f a Queer Planet. American ‘‘queer theory” remains as
relentlessly Atlantic-centric in its view of the world as the mainstream cul-
ture it critiques. Equally intriguing is the apparent lack of interest in “queer
theory” in most of the non-western world, and the continued usage by emerg-
ing movements of the terminology “lesbian” and “gay.”
SEX/GENDER/SEXUALITY IN ”6AY ”ASIA”

In late June 1994 there was a large demonstration in New York City to
commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Stonewall, the riots at the New
York bar of the same name which is, as a result, claimed as the birthplace of
the contemporary gay/lesbian movement. The organizers went to some trou-
ble to invite groups from the rest of the world-including the “developing”
world-to participate, obviously believing that the events being celebrated
420 6LQ: A JOURNAL OF LESBIAN 8 CAY STUDIES
were of universal relevance. In ways which would shock many anthropolo-
gists, a claim to the universality of “gay” and “lesbian” identities is emerging
in the rhetoric of groups such as (to speak only of Asia) Bombay Dost,
OCCUR (not an acronym, but referring to the sense of “something happen-
ing”) in Japan, Ten Percent in Hong Kong, Pink Triangle in Malaysia, the
Library Foundation in the Philippines, and the lesbian group Anjaree in
Thailand (“Anjaree-”).
It could be objected that these groups represent only a very small part of
the homosexual populations of these countries, and that their use of language
and symbols derived from overseas means they will be unable to mobilize
significant numbers within their own societies. But twenty years ago the gay
movements of North America, Australasia, and western Europe similarly
spoke for very few, and their growth was unpredictably rapid. Of course this
happened where the largely American symbols could be made relevant to
local conditions (as with Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, which has
become a uniquely Australian version of what elsewhere are “gay pride
parades”). But in a world where more and more cultural styles a r e imported
and assimilated there seems no reason why a western-style gayness should not
prove as attractive as other western identities.
The question is how to balance the impact of universalizing rhetoric and
styles with the continuing existence of cultural and social traditions. Let me
cite an encounter with a young Filipino in a bar in Quezon City, Metro
Manila, early last year. Ricardo had just come from a meeting of his univer-
sity’s gay group, and was full of excitement at the prospect of an upcoming
campus gay event. He spoke with enthusiasm of a march the group was
organizing in the neighborhood, and of a play that had recently been pre-
sented in the b a r where we were sitting.
The b a r itself requires description: Cinecaf6 combines elements of a cafe,
a bar, a porn video showroom, and a backroom for sex. All this is contained
in a small, three-story building on a back street far removed from the tourist
hotels of Makati and Ermita, with a clientele that is almost entirely Filipino.
At the same time there are certain aspects of Cinecaf6 that very clearly link it
to a larger global gay world: the posters, the magazines, the films themselves
(exclusively French and American) are the same that one might find in similar
establishments in Zurich, Montreal, or Sydney. In many ways Cinecaf6 is a
third-world version of the male sex-on-premises venues found in Los Angeles,
Melbourne, o r elsewhere, though it is much smaller and less well appointed.
Ricardo himself (like so many middle-class Filipinos, as fluent in English
as in Tagalog) sounded remarkably like the young men I had known in the
early 1970s in America, Australia, and western Europe, and spoke indeed
of gay liberation in phrases that were very familiar. This encounter raised
a whole set of questions about the meaning of terms like “gay” and “gay
GLOBAL 6AZV6LOlAl6AYS 421
liberation” in very different cultural contexts. For the streets outside were
the streets of a n undeniably third-world country, a n d the men in Cinecafh,
while in many ways shaped by western influence, were themselves part of
Filipino society, seeking each other out in ways similar to the ways homosex-
uals seek each other out in the west; they were not at this establishment to
meet Westerners or other foreign tourists (as some theories of the globaliza-
tion of sexuality would have it).
There are equivalents to Cinecafb in other parts of Asia. The past decade
has seen the growth of a commercial gay world-beyond its few existing
bastions, such as Bangkok and Tokyo-which now extends to most of the
countries of Asia where there is sufficient economic and political space. Both
affluence and political liberalism are required for a commercial gay world to
appear: that it appears to be bigger in Manila than Singapore is due to a
number of factors, of which comparative political tolerance seems to me the
most essential.
In recent years gay film festivals and magazines have appeared in Hong
Kong and India; in Malaysia the HIV/AIDS group Pink Triangle is a de facto
gay organization, which engages in a constant round of community develop-
ment activities (and now provides some space for lesbians as well); in Indone-
sia the gay organization KKLGN (Working Group for Indonesian Lesbians
and Gay Men) has groups in about eleven cities.’ Films and novels with gay
themes have begun appearing, especially in east Asia.’ Thailand has the most
developed gay infrastructure in southeast Asia, including a Thai gay press
(clearly not aimed at tourists) and several well-appointed saunas whose cli-
entele is largely Thai (Allyn; Jackson, D e a r ) . Lesbians remain almost invisi-
ble when their conditions are compared to those in western countries, and
except for Thailand there is little public information about lesbian worlds; it
is my impression that, except in Indonesia, only tentative steps have been
taken to establish a mutual sense of lesbiadgay cooperation.
Such contemporary forms of gay life coexist with older forms (often linked
to ritualized expressions of transgender) or hybrid forms--e.g., the annual
“Miss Gay Philippines Beauty Pageant” (Remoto 156-59). Yet a certain blur-
ring of the sexlgender order may not be that different from developments in
the West, as revealed in ideas of the “third sex” which prevailed in the early
stages of homosexual consciousness in Europe (see, e.g., Steakley) and more
contemporary popular images such as the successful play/musical/film
La Cage aux Folks. Western images of sexlgender in Asia often stress trans-
gender images, as in the popularity of the playifdm M . Butterfly, with its story
of a French diplomat’s love for a Chinese man he allegedly believed was a
woman.3 But to see transvestism as a particular characteristic of Asian cul-
tures is to miss the role of drag in all its perverse and varied manifestations in
western theater, entertainment, and commercial sex.
422 610: A JOURNAL OF LESBIAN 6 6AY STUDIES
Western fascination with these images may reflect a greater acceptance of
transgendered people (more accurately, transgendered males) in many Asian
countries. This is suggested in a report that the Indonesian entry to the most
recent Gay Games in New York included an all-transsexual netball team-the
national champions (Wyndham 26). In many countries such transgendered
communities are institutionalized and have won an accepted, if marginal,
social status, often as providers of personal services (hairdressers, beauti-
cians, etc.) which may include prostitution. Thus in Indonesia there is a
national association of waria whose patron is the Minister for Women’s
Affairs. In the Philippines local dignitaries will attend b a c k fashion shows.
There are differences as well as similarities between groups such as Indo-
nesian waria or banci, Filipino babaylun or bac(k)lu, Malay maknyah or
Thai kathoeys, which go beyond the scope of this paper. What they appear to
have in common is a conceptualization of the sedgender order which has no
simple equivalent in the dominant language or social arrangements of west-
ern societies. In translating the term kathoey Peter Jackson makes clear the
range of concepts the word conveys: “1: originally a male or female hermaph-
rodite; 2: male or female transvestite, or transsexual; 3: male homosexual or
(rarer) a female homosexual” (Dear 301). And referring to similar groups in
Polynesia Niko Besnier writes that: “sexual relations with men are seen as an
optional consequence of gender liminality, rather than its determiner, pre-
requisite or primary attribute” (300).
In general, the new gay groups reject a common identity with more tradi-
tional identities, and define themselves as contesting sexual rather than gen-
der norms. This is not to deny the significance of gender; as Richard Parker
wrote of similar developments in Brazil,
It would be more accurate to suggest that, rather than replacing an

earlier system of thought, this newer system has been superimposed on
it, offering at least some members of Brazilian society another frame of
reference for the construction of sexual meanings. In the emphasis on
sexuality, as opposed to gender, sexual practices have taken on signifi-
cance not simply as part of the construction of a hierarchy of men and
women, but as a key to the nature of every individual. (95)
The existence of several “systems of thought” leads to a certain ambivalence;

thus some Filipinos who belong to gay groups might also see themselves in
particular contexts as b ~ k l uClearly
.~ the divisions are related-though not
identical-to those of class, much as American or Australian men who twenty
years ago defined themselves as “gay” were largely from relatively privileged
backgrounds.
In much of urban Asia it is easy to see parallels with the West of several
decades ago: existing ideas of male homosexuals as would-be women are being
6LOBAl6AZV6LOBAl6AYS 423
replaced by the assertion of new self-concepts; more men are attracted to

the idea of primary homosexual relationships, rather than marrying and
engaging in “homosex” on the side; there is a development of more commer-
cial venues (but simultaneously, perhaps, there is less public cruising as
being “gay” makes homosexuality more specialized); in both organizations
and media there is the emergence of a gay political consciousness. The mock-
femininity of Thai or Indonesian “queens” and the mock-macho pose of
hustlers is eerily reminiscent of John Rechy’s novel of the early 1960s, City of
Night, as is the fluctuation between overt queeniness and a certain prudery,
public campiness and great secrecy vis-A-vis families and workmates.
There is, as well, a certain vulnerability and f r a g h t y which underlies
much of the new gay l i f e n o t , of course, without parallels elsewhere. For
many of the young men who become part of the growing gay worlds of Asian
cities there is a rupture with family, village, religion, and social expectations
which can be very painful. It is not uncommon to meet young men whose
growing sense of themselves as gay has led to interruptions of study, to breaks
with family, to a general feeling of being stranded between two worlds (where
an older western man will often be cast in the role of protector). Guilt, self-
hatred, even suicide are not uncommon for those who feel themselves irre-
trievably homosexual in societies that deny open discussion of sexual differ-
ence even while allowing for certain variations much less acceptable in the
west (Emond).
It is tempting to accept the Confucian and other Asian discourses about
the significance of the family, and forget that similar experiences are very
common for homosexuals in most countries, even those in northwest Europe
which have moved furthest toward official acceptance. American research,
for example, suggests the rate of suicide among adolescent homosexuals is far
higher than the average (Remafedi). Yes, most homosexuals in Asian (and
South American, eastern European and African) cities are still likely to be
more integrated into family roles and expectations than would be true in
Sydney, San Francisco, o r S t ~ t t g a r t But
. ~ we are speaking here of grada-
tions, not absolute differences, and the growing affluence of many “develop-
ing” countries means possibilities for more people to live away from their
families, and a gradual decline in pressure to get married. One of the key
questions concerns the ways in which gay identities will change as “Asians”
recuperate western images and bend them to their own purposes.
To see oneself as “gay” is to adhere to a distinctly modern invention, namely
the creation of an identity and a sense of community based on (homo)sexuality.
Most homosexual encounters-this is probably true even in the west-take
place between men or women who do not define themselves as “gay” or “lesbi-
an,” and certainly do not afffiate themselves with a community. The develop-
ment of such identities and communities began in the nineteenth century, al-
though some historians claim evidence of it-at least in London, Paris, and
424 614: A JUURMAL OF LESBIAN 8 6AY STUDIES
Amsterdam-in the elghteenth (e.g., Huussen; Trumbach). My focus is very

clearly on those men who perceive themselves-and increasingly present them-
selves to others-as having a consciousness and a politics which is related to
their sexuality. They may or may not be behaviorally bisexual; what matters
for the purpose of this discussion is their sense of identity. Frequently such
men appear more comfortable within an international homosexual world, which
they have often encountered firsthand through travel and study, than they are
with the traditional sedgender regime described by anthropologists and still
existing in rural areas of their countries.
What characterizes a gay community? Writing of Hungary (where the
political restraints until recently were similar to those of authoritarian Asia)
Laszlo Toth argues: “There is a specific gay social institution system-from a
specific nonverbal communication system to gay publications-which enables
homosexuals to communicate with other gays, supporting gay community
consciousness’’ (1).Despite the emphasis on communication, this is an insti-
tutional rather than a discursive view of community, recognizing that genuine
community requires the existence of specific institutions within which a
common consciousness can be expressed. These institutions may include a com-
munity-specific language (true of many homosexual subcultures, and now
apparent in the emergence of clearly defined gay slang(s) in Indonesia).
The gay worlds of Bangkok, Jakarta, Hong Kong, Manila, or Seoul are
obviously different from those of Budapest, Johannesburg, Hobart, Minne-
apolis, and Sao Paulo. Yet in all these cities-covering all continents and both
the “developed” and “developing” countries-there are similarities which
seem important and which I would hypothesize have more to do with common
urban and ideological pressures than they do with the cultural backgrounds
of, say, Thais, Hungarians, and Brazilians. There is a great temptation to
‘4
explain” differences in homosexuality in different countries with reference
to cultural tradition. What strikes me is that within a given country, whether
Indonesia or the United States, Thailand or Italy, the range of constructions
of homosexuality is growing, and that in the past two decades there has
emerged a definable group of self-identified homosexuals-to date many more
men than women-who see themselves as part of a global community, whose
commonalities override but do not deny those of race and nationality. This is
not to present a new version of an inexorable march towards “development,”
with the end point defined in terms of building American-style gay ghettoes
across the world. Stephen 0. Murray has warned that “there are obstacles to
the globalization of an egalitarian (gay) organization of homosexuality even
in the relatively industrialised and ‘modern’ capitals of ‘developing’ coun-
tries” (29). But globalization, in both its cultural and economic manifesta-
tions, impinges on the very creation and experience of sexual behavior and
identities.
GLOBAL GAWGLOBAL GAYS 425
The reasons for these developments lie in both economic and cultural
shifts which are producing sufficiently large and self-confident groups of men
(and some women) who wish to live as homosexuals in the western sense of
that term (i.e., expressing their sexual identity openly, mixing with other
homosexuals, and having long-term primary relations with other homosexu-
als). As such, the tradition that married men are reasonably free to have
discreet homosexual liaisons on the side seems as oppressive to the young
radicals of OCCUR (Japan) or FACT (Fraternity for AIDS Cessation in
Thailand) as it did to French or Canadian gay liberationists of the 1970s.
When I was in Morocco in 1995 I met several men who spoke of emigration
precisely because they were not willing to engage in the common practice of
marrying while continuing to have homosexual encounters outside the home.
It is sometimes assumed that the notion of “a homosexual identity forged
through shared lifestyles” has been, as Chilla Bulbeck put it, “almost exclu-
sive to the west” (Bulbeck 5). In fact, the evidence for homosexual identities,
lifestyles, and subcultures in a number of “developing” countries,
particularly in South and Central America, dates back to the early years of
the century and arguably before that, at least in Brazil (Bao; Daniel and
Parker; S. Murray; Trevisan). Similar historical work has yet to be done for
cities like Bombay, Manila, and Shanghai; almost certainly there are recog-
nizable subcultures whose history has not been recorded.
A political expression of homosexuality is far more recent. The first self-
conscious gay groups appeared in Indonesia (Lambda, in 1982) and Japan (JILGA,
in 1984) just before the advent of AIDS was to change the terrain for gay
organizing in ways which would make it more urgent while opening up certain
overseas sources of funding. In the past decade there has been a proliferation of
gay (sometimes lesbian and gay) groups, and many other AIDS organizations
do a certain amount of gay outreach or even community development.
It is clear that the language of HIV/AIDS control, surveillance, and educa-
tion has been a major factor in spreading the notion of “gay identity” and in
facilitating the development of gay consciousness, as it has also contributed
to the creation of the self-conscious identities of “sex workers” and “People
With AIDS” (PWAS).~It is impossible to know how far the dispersal of
western-style gay identities would have occurred without AIDS, which has
opened up both space and resources for gay organizing and increased west-
ern influence through surveillance, objectification, and shaping of sexuality.
Consider the large numbers of western or western-trained epidemiologists,
anthropologists, and psychologists who have used HIV/AIDS as a reason to
investigate sexual behaviors across the world, and by so doing have changed
the ways in which the participants themselves understand what they are
doing. The relationship is summed up in a flyer announcing a party at the
1995 AIDS in Asia Conference in Chiang Mai (Thailand):
Chaai Chuai Chaai is an NGO based in Chiang Mai. Our aim is to
increase safer sex among gay and bisexual men, and male sex workers
and their partners, through street outreach, bar outreach and one-on-
one peer education. We are a non-profit voluntary organization staffed
and run by the gay community in Chiang Mai.
Here the language of gay identity and gay-defined HIV education (“out-
reach,” “peer education”) are conflated to suggest a community which many
Thais would claim is irrelevant to continuing cultural assumptions.’ Matthew
Roberts has argued that AIDS has been the essential catalyst for these devel-
opments, although I suspect he may fall into the trap of assuming a linear
development toward the western model: “At Stonewall 50 we will likely find
ourselves an open and proud community globally, efficaciously practising
.
safe sex . . and with notable advances in our civil rights across the globe’’
(261).
NEOC 0LO NIAL S EX WARS ”
A large-scale construction of a lesbiadgay identity as a central social one-

what Stuart Hall calls a master identity (280)--developed in the western
world from the end of the 1960s on. Clearly, Asians who adopt lesbiadgay
identities are conscious of and in part moulded by these western examples. In
both North America and Europe gay liberation grew out of the counter-
culture and other radical movements, particularly feminism. To some extent
this is also true of the developing gay worlds of the south, but more signifi-
cant is the global explosion of communications. One example: several years
ago I walked into a hotel room in Buenos Aires and turned on the television
to see a live broadcast of the LesbianlGay Rights March in Washington D.C.
Similarly, the opening of the 1994 Gay Games in New York was on the front
page of the Jakarta Post, and large numbers of young Asians are learning
about lesbiadgay worlds from the proliferation of youth-oriented television
and rock videos. (Of course print media served to disperse news of the rise
of western gay movements before the days of MTV and CNN, although
less effectively.*)
Michael Tan links the rise of gay identities/organizations to western influ-
ence and a growing “middle class” (“Tita”) and claims there is “a global
Sexual Revolution, involving a gradual shift in transcending the view of sex-
as-reproduction toward sex and sexuality as consent and commitment, respect
and respectability” (“Introduction” xii). Yet as Tan recognizes, “modernity”
in the countries under discussion is rather different from its western models,
for it coexists with other and sometimes actively competing forces (see
Corbridge 199-201). Tan and others have suggested that the absence of the
GLOBAL GAZVGL0BA16AYS 427
sort of hostility towards homosexuality found in Anglo-Saxon societies may

also retard the development of gay political movements. This argument can
go overboard, as in Walter Williams’s argument that “Indonesian values-
social harmony, peacefulness and the national motto ‘unity in diversity’-
seem to protect gays from mistreatment more completely than western
notions of individual rights” (181). Such protection would not extend to
those whose “gayness” took on political forms deemed harmful to the Indone-
sian state.
The importation of certain concepts of sexualities is not of course new:
missionaries, anthropologists, government officials, and travelers have all
played their roles in simultaneously interpreting and obscuring existing real-
ities. In terms of importing homosexual identity, a significant western influ-
ence dates from at least the early years of this century. Western models of
homosexuality have come to Asia both through large cultural forces and
through the influence of individuals, who were often attracted to “the East”
because of its apparent liberality.
This is particularly true of Bali, which from the 1920s on was constructed by
rich European homosexuals as a “paradise” because of the seeming beauty and
availability of young Balinese men. The life of Walter Spies, a German painter,
most clearly expresses this. Spies was responsible in part for the western dis-
covery and fetishization of Balinese art, and eventually he fell afoul of a
colonial moral drive that came just before World War I1 (Rhodius and Darling
85). Indeed, Adrian Vickers claims: “It was not the Second World War but
Bali’s reputation as a homosexual paradise which ended the golden era of
European Bali” (124; cf. Baranay). Yet after World War I1 and Independence
there was something of a rebirth of Bali’s reputation, and a number of gay
foreigners, among them the Australian painter Donald Friend, settled there for
a time. A similar role has since been played by European expatriates in
Morocco (Finlayson). Today there is a considerable expatriate gay population
in Bali, as there is in Thailand, the Philippines, and Japan, drawn by the lure
of “available” young men and “tolerant” social mores.
It is easy to condemn these men in the tones which are increasingly being
used in a blanket fashion to demonize all sex tourists, and it is undeniable
that there are some very ugly aspects to gay sex tourism. At one level there is
the same exploitation of young Asians common in the much larger heterosex-
ual scene (Jennaway; Sturdevant and Stoltzfus): beach prostitution in Kuta
(Bali) or take-out bars in Bangkok are not particularly attractive, and young
men face many of the same threats to health and integrity as do young
women. But without denying the ugliness born of larger economic inequities,
one has to recognize a somewhat more complex pattern of relationships at
work. In many cases young men are able to use their sexual contacts with
(usually older) foreigners to win entry into the western world, either through
428
the acquisition of money, skills, o r language or, more dramatically, through
the possibility of emigration. Some young men have made a conscious deci-
sion to use their sexuality as a means for social mobility, settling for a “house-
wife” role with a richer and older westerner out of a mixture of glamor and
calculation.
Nonetheless, these relationships are inevitably shaped by colonial struc-
tures, which a r e almost impossible to escape. Racism and colonial scripts of
superiority/inferiority are replicated within structures of desire in ways which
neither side is comfortable in admitting. (One reader of this manuscript
assumed that I was speaking here of active/passive or top/bottom role-play-
ing; I have something more complex in mind. As Genet showed in the rela-
tionships between servants and master in his play The Maids, such roles may
well be reversed in an unconscious transgression of colonial assumptions .)
Ironically, the assertion of “gayness” among young middle-class Asian men is
beginning to erode their willingness to employ the same script an older gener-
ation has used to enter the Western homosexual world.
There is a danger that both moral indignation and over-romanticizing will
get in the way of fully understanding the dynamics of westerdAsian homosex-
ual contacts. Undoubtedly many Westerners desire in Asians (both men and
women) deference and servitude that may be unavailable at home, and for
some the colonialhacist framework of their relationships allows them to act
out their own sense of self-hatred. While there is an extensive literature of
the gay expatriate-from late nineteenth-century Frenchmen in northern
Africa to Anglo-American writers such as A n g u s Wilson and Francis King
and, more recently, Christopher Bram, Neil Miller, and Peter Jackson (In-
trinsic)-there is virtually nothing written from the point of view of the
LL
local,’’ and there is a great need to hear those voice^.^
But this is only part of the story: the gay men one sees in western-style
discos at Legian (Bali) o r bars in Bangkok are not the only ones. There a r e
many venues in Bangkok, Tokyo, or Manila which cater almost exclusively to
locals; indeed, a number of gay bars in Japan deliberately discourage for-
eigners, and the one gay sauna in Manila explicitly excludes them. In both
cases fear of AIDS is the ostensible reason; the larger underlying motives are
clearly more complex and operate on a number of levels. Long-lasting rela-
tionships exist between Asian homosexuals, marked by a certain equality,
and part of the creation of “modern” gay identity appears to be a desire to
open up the possibility of such relationships without their being framed by
necessary differences of age, status or race.
There is another factor now a t work: the development of significant com-
munities of “gay Asians” in the diaspora. An Asian gay consciousness has
emerged over the past decade in the United States, Canada, Australia, and
Britain, expressed through a host of burgeoning social and political groups
(Chua). In this sense, the image presented in the film The Wedding Banquet
is remarkably out of date: the film opposes a white gay world to a traditional
Taiwanese heterosexual one, but nowhere recognizes the existence in a city
like New York of a very si&icant and increasingly visible East Asian gay
community. Gay Asian expatriates are playing a role of some importance in
the furthering of gay groups and identities “back home,” even though, as
Richard Fung has warned, they often seek to “conflate the realities of Asians in
the diaspora with those living in Asian countries” (126). ’
GLOBALIZING INFLUENCES ON ASIAN SEXUAL IDENTITIES

There are three dominant scripts in which the globalization of gay identities
are commonly described. The first sees southeast Asia as possessing a “natu-
ral” tolerance for sexual fluidity and expression before the onset of colonial-
ism, and places great emphasis on the continuing traditions of both homosex-
ual and transgender cultures. Thus Frederick Whitham writes: “The
Philippines, as is generally true of Southeast Asian and Polynesian societies,
has maintained a longstanding tradition of tolerance for its homosexual pop-
ulations” (234). This script led to the twentieth-century view of some parts of
Asia-Thailand; Sri Lanka; Bali-as homosexual paradises. Out of this grows
the second script, strongly emphasizing the impact of colonialism and tour-
ism in creating homosexual worlds. This in turn feeds a third script, which
places its emphasis on the impact of modernity, and argues for the current
development of gay identities, communities, and organizations across Asia as
part of a larger pattern of economic and cultural globalization. Thus Kevin
McDonald, though barely mentioning homosexuality, refers to “the impor-
tance of globally produced imaginary communities centred on forms of con-
stitution of the body, consumption and sexuality” (21). As two Indonesian
AIDS workers have written: “Globalisation and economic growth have
allowed Indonesian youth unprecedented access to information and media
about sex” (Murdijana and Prihaswan lO).’O
It is constantly important to find a balance between the view of globaliza-
tion as a new stage of imperialism and the triumphalist discourse of globalization
as the creation of a new world society, characterised by Simon During as
C&magic”:
“General magic” is an appropriate term because it catches the astonish-

ing cross-cultural reach of the desire for broadcasting, music, camera
and video products. This general desire is not “natural.” . . . Desires
are produced by transnational advertising campaigns, while the tech-
nologies are shaped by data gathered through ethnographic market
research. (341)
430 610: A JOURNAL OF LESBIAN 8 6AY STUDIES
While I accept the role of economic and cultural globalization as crucial to

the development of new sexual identities, such explanations must build on
existing sex/gender regimes and values, just as contemporary gay worlds
in the west have built on preexisting traditions and cultures. But as I am
skeptical that the recent claims of John Boswell for the existence of church-
sanctified gay marriage in the early Middle Age tells us much about either
current Catholicism or contemporary homosexuality, so I suspect that the
emergence of gay groups and commercial worlds in modern Asia has relative-
ly little to do with precolonial cultural formations. The comment of Clark
Taylor-that “homosexual Mexicans often prefer their way of interacting to
the U.S. forms because of cherished, cultural values” (117)-ignores the
other factors at play.
This is not to deny the powerful symbolic and psychological reasons for
exploring such connections: one of the benefits of a postcolonial approach is
to unravel the ways in which colonial practices have denied cultural tradi-
tion. It is ironic that in many developing countries religious and gay interpre-
tations present bitterly opposed views of the “traditional” status of homo-
sexuality. Thus in Iran or China-with several thousand years of literary
exploration of homosexual love-there is bitter persecution of “decadence.”
The desire of developing elites to deny their own sexual histories because of
imported moralities, and the resulting persecution of homosexuals, are
explored for China by Hinsh (165-66; see Ruan and Tsai).
Sexual identity politics grows out of modernity but also shows the way to
postmodernity, because it both strengthens and interrogates identity as a
fixed point and a central reference. The claiming of lesbiadgay identities in
Asia or Latin America is as much about being western as about sexuality,
symbolized by the co-option of the word “gay’” into Thai, Indonesian, etc.,
and by the use of terms such as modern0 (in Peru) and internacwnal (in
Mexico) to describe “gayness” (S. Murray 29). As Alison Murray puts it,
Jakarta is now gayer than ever, and despite the dominant discourse, gay
is a modern way to be. This has undoubtedly been influenced by west-
ern trends and internationalisation of gay culture, and in the process,
the distinctive position of the banci has tended to be subsumed within
the definition of gay. (6)
While such developments are clearly related to affluence, it is nonetheless

worth noting the slow development of a western-style gay world in such
countries as Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. In these countries, despite both
extensive American influence and a considerable commercial world, it does
not appear that a large open community is developing-although there is
growing media interest in gay issues. (I have been told that the first Korean

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ss.edu/glq/article-pdf/3/4/417/415450/ddglq_3_4_417.pdf?

casa_token=iAJCpmuBkY4AAAAA:xpjSiyegwSVsHkoikZFGRzWJeDsBU0UK0_IwQqQ_6HlirzjrbGkExkmJvD1SuUzwZMLQbL4IMQ by LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLIT

“What was fundamentally invisible is

Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic

GLQ, Vol. 3, pp. 417-436 6 1997 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association)

Malaysia, may undermine this assumed,solidarity. Moreover, the ubiquity of

None of the contributors to this particular book take up this challenge-

SEX/GENDER/SEXUALITY IN ”6AY ”ASIA”

It would be more accurate to suggest that, rather than replacing an

The existence of several “systems of thought” leads to a certain ambivalence;

replaced by the assertion of new self-concepts; more men are attracted to

Amsterdam-in the elghteenth (e.g., Huussen; Trumbach). My focus is very

NEOC 0LO NIAL S EX WARS ”

A large-scale construction of a lesbiadgay identity as a central social one-

sort of hostility towards homosexuality found in Anglo-Saxon societies may

GLOBALIZING INFLUENCES ON ASIAN SEXUAL IDENTITIES

“General magic” is an appropriate term because it catches the astonish-

While I accept the role of economic and cultural globalization as crucial to

While such developments are clearly related to affluence, it is nonetheless

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